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30 September 2013

We often ask this question. In this age of ever present cameras (either
actual cameras, cell phones, Ipads, etc), many born now find images of
themselves and others ubiquitous!

It’s hard for some to realize that photographs were a rarity until say the 1900s or so and even then most families didn’t have a camera and it required a trip to a photo studio. Even drivers licenses didn’t have pictures, nor school ID cards. Do read about the History of Photography.

I was fortunate
that my dad was into cameras (still and movie in the 1950s and 1960s) and so he
probably played around a bit more than an average person taking photos and
videos. By the 1970s, I had my own
cameras – I can’t remember the first one I got and it had a heft to it that I
do still remember and my first pictures (taken in England) are still a part of
my collection (though they weren’t very good). Though, for future generations, there won't be any questions about what we looked like!

And, even if photos
were taken and are now in our possession, they weren’t always labeled. I have a few of individuals that I would love
to identify. It’s kind of funny, and I have used some of the documents listed above to then identify some of my mystery people in photographs! A good
description is always valuable!

Where else have you found descriptions of the physical
characteristics of your ancestors?

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27 September 2013

Welcome
to our newest edition of our bi-weekly feature Upfront Mini Bytes. In Upfront Mini Bytes we provide eight tasty
bits of genealogy news that will help give you a deeper byte into your family
history research. Each item is short and sweet. We encourage you to check
out the links to articles, blog posts, resources, and anything genealogical!

We hope you found
the past editions helpful. Use your
favorite search engine with “Upfront with NGS” “Mini Bytes” or use this Google search link.

Do you have
questions, suggestions for future posts, or comments? Please post a comment or send an e-mail to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

If you like doing
research in your jammies, check out (from the Library of Congress) 71 Digital Portals to State History.
Do check out the comments posted as there is a lot more neat content listed in
them!

There is an
interesting and new online digital archive, Lantern: Search, Visualize & Explore the Media History
Digital Library. It provides a search and visualization platform for over
800,000 pages of digitized books and magazines from the histories of film,
broadcasting, and recorded sound. It’s an open access co-production of the
Media History Digital Library and the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Communication Arts. If you have any performers in your family,
they maybe documented here!

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endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog.

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We talk a
lot about breaking down brick walls!
Most, if not all of us, have at one time or another run into something
we considered a “brick wall.”

And, Robyn
makes us consider ...

My friend Aaron calls them
artificial. They can also be called self-imposed brick walls. We say this to
mean we have labeled something a brick wall that really isn’t a brick wall. We
call them that even though we haven’t done our due diligence in terms of
careful research.

Is this true
for you? Did you maybe give up sooner than you needed to? We have probably all
done this at one time or another. How often have you been stumped by something, put it aside for a few weeks, months, or years and then come back to it to find that the “proverbial” light bulb goes off and you’ve either solved your “brick wall” with information you had in your possession or you now have a whole bunch of new research ideas to explore.

Or, how
often have you just persevered, researched more, learned more and then a “new-to-you”
resource provides the answer?

What “artificial” brick walls have
you constructed as a part of your genealogical journey?

How did you deconstruct that “artificial”
brick wall(s)?

Some other
recent perspectives on genealogy and brick walls can be found:

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imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this
blog.

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25 September 2013

JSTOR just
keeps getting better and better for researchers. It’s doing this by becoming
more and more accessible! Previously one
had to be associated with a University or other institution which held a
subscription to gain access. Over the
last few years, great strides have been made to provide access to the general
population (see previous articles listed below for more on these efforts).

Now, JSTOR has announced JPASS – monthly & annual individual access plans for independent researchers, recent graduates, professionals, and lifelong learners. JPASS gives you personal access to a library of more than 1,500 academic journals on JSTOR. The subscription details can be found here.

It represents
a large portion of what is in the JSTOR library (approximately 83%), but not
all of it. You can learn about what’s
currently included in JPASS here. Content not in the JPASS Collection includes books,
primary sources, current journal issues, and, in some cases, journal archives.
If you encounter inaccessible content, it may be available for limited
free reading, for purchase as
an individual article, or available through an interlibrary loan from a JSTOR
participating library.

A lot of
journal content of interest to genealogists and family historians can be found
on JSTOR. Read these previous Upfront
with NGS posts on this topic for some examples:

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imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this
blog.

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statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

Though there are many search engines
out there, I still like to use Google Search.
Part of the reason is that I do like to get “results” that are not in
English and are not on “traditional” genealogy websites.

And, periodically,
I will get results in a language other than English and using Google Translate
in conjunction, I can typically get the “jist” of the information to be found
on such a non English page.

This was kind of a
“duh” moment for me. Given that in the
last year I have traveled to Canada,
Mexico and Spain and
inadvertently ended up on the Google version available in each of those
countries, you think that I would have made the “connection” that I could force
my browser to mimic that experience. Page 3 of the aforementioned article
includes a list of those countries for which there is a Google Search Engine
and also those countries/languages for which Google has translation
capabilities.

Here I was so proud of myself in that I was “seeing” non-English results and translating them and, as they say, that is only the “tip of the iceburg” as far as really delving into that information that might be available to myself and other researchers via country-specific internet searches.

Though I did have to laugh that even on Google.pl (the Polish version of Google) when I searched on “Wola Pietrusza” + Barna, I ended up on my own website and family research. That said, when I searched on Google.fi (the Finnish version of Google) for Kujanpää + Ylistaro, I did see some of my own research again and this time though, there were many more pages which clearly are about members of the same Kujanpää family as researched by native Finns!

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endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog.

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Did you know that like people,
churches often have “family trees” also?

I was reminded of
this when I read, Many prominent
Longview churches part of First Baptist Church family tree.
Some congregations are formed from scratch while others evolved as
populations grew, while still others disappeared as the population shifted
(population movement, change in the dominant religions of the area, etc), or
conflicts in religious tenets spurred some new congregations which then subsequently (often decades later) re-joined,
etc.

Some churches are
long lived while others are not so.

Just as we research
state, county and town/city formations, we also need to be aware of church
history and how the presence of congregations has changed through time in the
community we are researching. And, as
reinforced by the article about Longview Baptist churches, it’s important to
know what congregations were possibly formed from a parent church.

For example, you
are researching a family where the parents have lived for decades in a certain
community. You find that they are buried
in the cemetery of a church that was “created” 10 years earlier. Unless they joined the “faith” late in life
(which is possible), odds are that they were members of another church. Sometimes, individuals do change faiths (my
gran in England seemed to join a church of a different faith each time she
moved – what was most important to her were the preachers and how well she
identified with them), though more people probably stick with “one” faith.

Was the church
where they were buried “created” from some parishioners of an “older”
church?

Why is this
important? Just as with government
records, in many cases the records will be associated with the “entity” which
created them. Records of baptisms,
marriages, deaths, and more will be with the church where these events were
recorded in real-time. Yes, these
records might be in an ecclesiastical archive somewhere and again, you still
need to know “which” records to look at.

So, if you find
that a church your ancestor was associated with was not as old as your ancestor,
try and learn its history. This history
might suggest other churches with which your ancestor might have been
associated. This might then lead you to
some neat records. Knowing the religion
of a person and then the history of the churches (of that faith) in an area has
allowed me to work backwards through the person’s life in parallel with
corresponding church records found in the predecessor churches they were
associated with. And, if you are really
lucky, there might also be a mention of “where” they came from and when or of
family members.

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endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog.

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...There’s an awesome little
subreddit that has been getting a lot of press coverage as of late. It’s called ColorizedHistory,
and is a 20,000+ person strong community of “Amateur Historians” who are
interested in the idea of creating high quality colorized versions of
historical black-and-white photographs...

The images
are fascinating.

I’m not
sure what I think of this. It’s funny to
say that I associate black-and-white and sepia colored images and hand-colored
images as indicative of the “age” of an image.
For example, I expect all civil war images to be black-and-white. Even in the early 1900s, the images taken of
my family are all black-and-white with a hand-colored image here and there.

Yet, if I
really think about it, my descendants will only see all the “color” photos that
I have taken. Might future photos be
different? Maybe “move” as depicted in
the Harry Potter book series?

It’s also
interesting that many of the black-and-white images seem grittier to me than
their newly colored counterparts? Is
that just my familiarity with some of the images (and so they look “wrong” to
me when colorized) or is there something else going on? Well, we are genealogists and not
psychologists and so I’ll put that aside for now ...

What do you think about colorized
versions of historical black-and-white images?
Thumbs up, thumbs down, not sure?

NGS does not
imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this
blog.

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19 September 2013

SC, 1807One of two signatures for an individual with the exact same nameCopyright 2013, Diane L Richard

MS, 1824

Second of two signatures for an individual with the exact same name

Same person or not?

Copyright 2013, Diane L Richard

Given that some families loved to
use the same names generation to generation and across generations (e.g. it
seems that every cousin, uncle and great-uncle has the same name), how do we
tell them apart? Do recognize that even
for names that seem highly unique (e.g. Hezekiah Farrow) and/or where a middle
initial is used (e.g. Wm S McKoy), there can and often is more than one person
with that name. It wasn’t just the
Smiths and Jones who liked to use a common forename surname combination in
their family tree!

Sometimes we can
connect them definitively to wives and children through records or to land via
other records or to in-laws and associates through yet other documents and
sometimes we just cannot seem to make those linkages through documents.

What else can we
do? It might be time to look at their
signatures. Remember, that though many
documents were written by others, our ancestors did sign them. Sometimes that signature was a an “X,” sometimes
it was a “mark” and sometimes it was a “signature” (as we think of today, first
and last name). Be very, very careful to
determine whether you are looking at a copy of a document or an original
document (e.g. a will book versus an original will, a deed book versus an original
deed, court minutes versus loose court papers, etc). Otherwise, the signature that you “save” may
be that of the court clerk and not of your ancestor.

Know, for your area
and time period, which types of documents were typically “signed” by a
person. Some examples include:

One’s will or as witness to the
will of another

Administrator or executor of an
estate

Bonds – estate-related,
marriage, court (e.g. appearance), etc

Land grants (e.g. in NC,
Granville grants bear original signatures of the grantee)

Original deeds

Petitions

etc

Collect as many
signatures as possible through time.
Remember, that our signatures don’t remain the same. And, as a person was dying, they may have
“signed” with a signature their whole life and just use an “X” on their will as
they are too enfeebled.

Sometimes, it can
be hard to tell – see the McCoy/McKoy signatures pictured above – the same or
different? My colleagues and I think
they are “different” though the differences except for the C/K change (most
people don’t change “how” they spell their name and can we guarantee they didn’t?)
are subtle – the curve of a letter, the use of tails or not, loops, and more
...

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endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog.

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18 September 2013

The genealogy industry has traditionally been a somewhat “sleepy” trade. However that industry is on the verge of explosive growth thanks to the Internet, social media and national television exposure via Who
Do You Think You Are? and Genealogy Roadshow. While some may bemoan the
changes and the need to monitor many different points of entry to the genealogy
market, others are scaling their resources to take advantage of the newcomers
and addressing their needs.

The days of genealogy societies and businesses acting as if they were run out of a church basement, a kitchen table or as a weekly neighborhood coffee klatch no longer serve the needs of today’s genealogy enthusiasts. Yet, this doesn’t mean these groups have to “go corporate” and lose that sense of small town approachability. The smart use of modern tools with an old-fashioned approach to customer service can be a formula for success.

Customer Service Meets Social Media

Savvy
organizations are using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for
their customer service needs. Yes, there are risks in handling inquiries in
such a public manner and from time to time you will encounter an irate customer
who just can’t be satisfied. But for many companies and membership groups, the
transparency that customer service via social media provides and the goodwill
that it builds is worth not just the risk, but the tasks involved with handling
customer service inquiries online.

Here are
some tips:

·Manage
expectations. If your organization can’t field requests on weekends or after hours, make sure this is clear both on your website and on your social media platforms. Most people don’t expect an immediate response but they usually hope to hear back within 24 hours. A fast response time is always impressive, but don’t let those quick responses set the bar for unrealistic expectations.

·Check
platforms frequently or set up alerts. Make sure you check your business or
organization’s Facebook page and other social media platforms at least once a
day. Nothing says “stale” and “unresponsive” like a posting made by a customer
or potential member that sits there for days or weeks. Use notification
services built in to each platform to receive email or text message alerts when
others post or ask a question.

·Be human. What works for the big corporations can work for the small business owner or society in genealogy: come across as human and not an automaton. This means having conversations via social media with your customers. Go out of your way to thank customers for their patronage. Tell customers to have a great weekend or holiday. There can be many “persons” managing a social media account but there should be a unified “voice” in all communications.

·Monitor
the chatter. Besides checking in at the social media platforms you manage,
also use Google Alerts (http://alerts.google.com) to be notified
via e-mail when there is new information about your organization posted to the
Internet. Also create a separate alert for each product such as a publication.

Pro-Active Customer Service – Is There Such
a Thing?

Think
about it: if we see genealogists as consumers and customers, then we know that
they will at some point need to take advantage of a vendor or society’s
customer service. This could initially be in the pre-customer stage when they
have questions about a product or joining as a member.

Do you
have a Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ) section on your website? Doing so can minimize the emails and phone calls
you will answer for prospective customers. Do you have a “welcome” mat for new
users or consumers even if it consists of an automated e-mail greeting? Do you
check in with the newcomers to understand their needs? Do you ask for feedback
after a given period of time?

Customers: Keep Them Coming Back

Remember
that the customer or member that renews on a regular basis and can quickly see
the value of your products and services is the best kind of customer. You only
have to look to the “big muscle” in genealogy – Ancestry.com – to understand
how important it is to not just attract new users, but to keep the current
users happy and using the Ancestry services.

Your best
customer will be one who not just continues using your services, but is willing
to engage with your customer service mechanisms and, more importantly, tell others
in the genealogy community about their experience.

Bio:
Thomas MacEntee is a genealogy professional specializing in the use of
technology and social media to improve genealogical research and as a means of
interacting with others in the family history community. For more information
visit http://hidefgen.com.

NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or
other vendors appearing in this blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission
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All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the
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DeliveryQuoteCompare.com have
revealed that 52% of Brits treasure the TV over any other possession when moving house.

The study suggests that
the Family heirloom is no longer considered in high regard with us
Brits. Despite featuring on the list of 'Priority During A House
Move', Family heirlooms did not rank in the top ten, only making it
to the number 11 spot with 14% of the overall vote...

... Daniel Parry, spokesperson for
DeliveryQuoteCompare.com, commented on the findings: "It used to be the case that the family silver came first. Now it
seems that it's the family television. Or possibly the laptop. It's probably a
modern take on society; priorities change over time, but it's sad to think that
we've gone so far that family heirlooms are no longer regarded as something
precious."

Do recognize that
how a question is asked often does skew how it might be answered. In this case, the question focused on safety
during transport. That said, are
heirlooms of lesser importance to us?

If you were moving, what would be your priorities?

Let’s go a step further – “if” your house was on fire, or it
was starting to flood, or a tornado was heading towards it, and all people and
pets were safe and you could “safely” grab a few items, what would those be?

Or, if you have already been affected by some type of “disaster”
what did you grab?

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endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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